CANDYMAN

Set in Chicago’s infamous public-housing project Caprini-Green, Clive Barker’s Candyman is a corporeal horror film that embodies racial and gender politics.

Skeptical graduate student Helen Lyle’s investigation of the “Candyman” urban legend – where a hooked-hand killer can be summoned by saying his name five times in a mirror – not only initiates a series of new unexplained murders but also ignites a realization that personal traumas can violently exist beyond the grave. With its inclusion of architectural connections and spiritual conversions (rooms within the projects are linked to each other and are from where Candyman emerges), Candyman destablizes and eviscerates the results produced when urban development and cultural politics collide.

On Thursday, November 3, our music-in-film series, Music Driven, invited the great filmmaker Penelope Spheeris to the theater to talk her breakthrough documentary: The Decline of Western Civilization. More Info